The POWER Interview: Investing in Energy Solutions for the Data Center Boom

Andrejka Bernatova[/caption] Bernatova is an accomplished jock who has completed the Marathon des Sables, a ~200-mile ultra-marathon contention crossed the Sahara Desert. She besides biked much than 600 miles crossed Tibet and Nepal to the Mount Everest Base Camp. She has volunteered successful orphanages and operation projects successful Kenya, Chile, Nepal, and Egypt. Bernatova has lived, worked, and studied crossed 5 continents, and speaks 5 languages. Bernatova precocious provided POWER with penetration into her company’s business. and besides discussed Dynamix’s content that the vigor and infrastructure manufacture is successful the aboriginal phases of a decades-long modulation to a low-carbon, sustainable future. POWER: What are the targets for Dynamix erstwhile it comes to North American vigor and infrastructure?Bernatova: Our absorption is precise pragmatic. For Dynamix Capital Partners, the precedence is assets that beryllium astatine the intersection of power, vigor security, and scale, peculiarly procreation and infrastructure that tin enactment the adjacent question of request driven by AI, information centers, and grid resiliency. We’re targeting cash-flowing, industrial-scale platforms that tin beryllium portion of the solution implicit the adjacent 5 to 10 years. We’re presently successful the process of completing the deSPAC for our astir caller concern operation with The Ether Machine, announced this past summer. We presumption integer assets done the aforesaid lens arsenic vigor and infrastructure, and Ethereum is an energy-efficient large blockchain. This aligns straight with our absorption connected scalable infrastructure that improves ratio alternatively than exacerbating strain, making the transaction a earthy hold of our halfway focus. (Editor's note: De-SPAC refers to a concern woody wherever a backstage institution goes nationalist by merging with a SPAC.)POWER: You’ve talked astir “Disruptive Decarbonization.” What does that mean?Bernatova: Disruptive decarbonization is astir reducing emissions successful a mode that really works wrong real-world constraints. The fastest mode to decarbonize astatine standard contiguous is not by waiting for cleanable technologies, but by replacing dirtier fuels with cleaner ones that already beryllium and tin beryllium deployed immediately, peculiarly earthy gas. If you tin chopped emissions by 50-60% contiguous alternatively than committedness 100% simplification successful 10 years, that’s existent impact. Disruption comes from pragmatism, not from chasing headlines. POWER: How has your erstwhile acquisition arsenic an relation and institution builder astatine PennTex Midstream, Enchanted Rock, and Goodnight Midstream helped with the vigor deals you enactment connected today?Bernatova: Being an relation changes however you spot risk. At PennTex, Enchanted Rock, and Goodnight, I was liable for execution, contracts, superior allocation and superior raising, and operating done cycles, which forces discipline. It teaches you wherever models break, wherever assumptions fail, and wherever worth is really created. Today, erstwhile we look astatine deals, we absorption heavy connected operational reality: Can this beryllium built? Does this concern person a sustainable commercialized and lawsuit backbone? Can it beryllium financed? Can it past volatility? Does it make currency flow? That mindset is invaluable. POWER: What are the superior factors you see erstwhile assessing a imaginable woody for vigor infrastructure?Bernatova: First, currency travel visibility and declaration structure, because, without that, thing other matters. Second, scalability, oregon whether the plus grows alongside request without relying connected speculative exertion shifts. Third, resiliency and relevance to the grid, due to the fact that assets that amended reliability volition ever matter. And finally, superior structure. Too galore deals neglect due to the fact that they’re built connected overly engineered oregon toxic financing. We’re highly disciplined astir equilibrium sheets and alignment from time one. POWER: What should startup vigor companies beryllium looking astatine arsenic they devise strategies for their concern successful today’s highly competitory market?Bernatova: They request to absorption connected commercialization and profitability overmuch earlier. Energy is not software; it is large-scale infrastructure and plus deployment. You cannot trust connected perpetual backing rounds oregon subsidies. Startups indispensable beryllium brutally honorable astir whether their exertion tin standard economically and make EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization). If your concern lone works nether cleanable regulatory conditions oregon continuous authorities support, it’s not a business. The companies that past volition beryllium the ones that recognize cost, execution, and lawsuit request from the outset. POWER: You’ve held concern roles astatine immoderate of the world’s largest banks, including Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley, and you’ve besides worked astatine The Blackstone Group. What person been the astir important lessons you’ve learned from that experience, peculiarly arsenic it relates to structuring vigor deals?Bernatova: Structure matters arsenic overmuch arsenic the plus itself. I’ve learned that atrocious superior tin destruct a bully business. The champion deals are simple, aligned, and built for durability, alternatively than optimized for short-term fiscal engineering. Energy assets unrecorded done cycles, truthful your superior operation has to past those cycles. Alignment betwixt sponsors, management, and investors is critical. If incentives are misaligned astatine the start, the woody is already broken. POWER: How has your acquisition arsenic an ultra-marathoner impacted your career? Does the subject required to excel successful that athletics construe to your enactment successful business?Bernatova: Ultra-marathons thatch you however to run nether sustained pressure, negociate energy, marque decisions erstwhile conditions are acold from ideal, and beryllium capable to unrecorded done periods of semipermanent pain. Business, particularly successful this industry, is not a sprint. It’s astir endurance, discipline, and staying rational erstwhile others panic. You larn to respect process, hole for adversity, and support moving guardant adjacent erstwhile advancement is incremental. That mindset translates straight to however I attack investing and gathering companies. —Darrell Proctor is simply a elder exertion for POWER.